How McDougall Topped The Score

NZ Truth, Issue 1202, 13 December 1928, Page 6

How McDougall Topped The Score

SOME impetuous individuals would like to jump from private life into Parliament without a preliminary canter m local affairs. Sometimes they succeed. But, for the man who sets his cap at Parliament, a hard-boiled experience m - local government is not a bad qualification. ■ Nothing impulsive ,or impatient, for instance, about Davie McDougall, of Gore. He did not seek to reach Parliament m one spectacular stride. Step by step through the obscurity of local bodies has he reached his goal. .Just as the Hon. Anderson surpi'ised the world by defeating a cabinet minister, so . now is he, himself, knocked speechless at his rejection m favor of Davie McDougall. But, auite plainly, Davie has been ■knocking for years at the big door ot Paiilariient House. Starting at the foot of the ladder, his first rung to fame was the East Gore School Committee. Then he took his seat m: the august assembly of the Gore Borough Council.

A few years later his solid frame .filled the mayoral throne of Gore. With no more worlds to conquer within the municipal cabbage patch, Davie preened himself as a candidate for Parliament. What are a couple of rebuffs ta a. hard-headed southerner? They only steel his" will to succeed. At any rate, Davie has now topped the score and is the member for Mataura. More than forty years is it since he left his native Glesca for the promised: land of New Zealand. Hard slogging on the land for the new chum young Scot for .a few years. But young McDougall had been reared m a school, where hard knocks had to be taken and endured. Bluff, genial, and with a shrewd appraisement of his fellows, he will step warily through the mazes of political life. ' • A canny Southlander, and yet curiously undisturbed by the prospect of seeing the people blessed by shoals of shekels, all through the absurdly simple process of signing 1.0.U5.